James' Game Reviews, 360 style

I know I'm not a professional gamer, and I'm not good at a lot of games. But here is where I'll give the good and bad of the games I've played. I may or may not go along with the real reviews by people who do this for a living, but I will go by my level of enjoyment while playing the games.

Call of Duty 4

Solo Play
As I'm better at 1st Person shooters, I took to this game quickly. I bought it on Turkey day of 07, along with my xbox. (bought the xbox for this game)

The story is very linear and follows a direct pattern. I enjoy the climactic build up to the last mission.

What I enjoy most about this game is the fact that each button is assigned to one task. RT to fire, RB for frags, Y to switch guns. Unlike other games where you're trying to manipulate 2 buttons to switch to your pistol.

Game play is pretty exciting on the middle difficulty setting (recruit), and as you'd expect increases when you get to hardened or veteran. When I bought the game I stayed up all night until I had beaten it on Recruit.

Online Play
Coming into it, it plays a lot like the solo missions. You start off with certain guns, and as you level up from 1 to 55, you unlock more guns. Getting kills gives you attachments which are fun and exciting until you get used to them, then you start to wish you could have the acog and grenade launcher on your gun at the same time.

I've played this a lot online (60 days + between two gamertags), and I can tell you the play itself doesn't get boring - unless you're playing against a clan who's only goal is to win.

If you don't mind people who glitch or camp, this game is for you. You have many different game times to choose from; from team deathmatch (first team to 750 points wins) to search and destroy (first team to plant the bomb and succeed in destroying it 4 times wins, capturing team who are killed don't respawn until its destroyed), to headquarters (you have to capture and hold the HQ, when you're on the team holding the HQ and you get killed you're not respawned until its destroyed), all of which give you a choice of regular and hardcore. In hardcore bullets do damage and health doesn't regenerate. Meaning if you get "red screened", and then try to jump down 10 feet, it'll kill you.

This so far has been the only game I've seen to not offer any achievements for online play.

Solo Play
The mission starts with you as a US Marine being rescued from death by your squad in the south pacific, from there its much like COD4, a first person shooter. You have to take the island of Peleliu and Okinawa from the Japanese strongholds, and survive many banzai attacks. Its thrilling and somewhat disturbing as you're laying on your back stabbing a japanese guy in the throat while he's trying to banzai you with his bayonet. The story flows quite well with history right up to taking Shuri Castle as the turning point in the PTO.

You'll switch back and forth between the PTO to the ETO as a Russian private. Your first mission is to assassinate General Amsel, this mission on veteran is kind of a pain in the ass but the reward of the achievements will keep you playing. You'll end up fighting to get into the Reichstag, and then to clear it out.

Once I got into the solo play, as all the buttons are the same as in COD4, it turned out to be really fun and frustrating on hardened/veteran.

Online Play
As this game was made by a different company, the online play isn't as smooth, or fair, compared to COD4. It has its campers and glitchers as with any game, I will give the manufacturers the props for fixing the glitches quickly. However, the spawn points and times don't provide the fun atmosphere to play. In playing this online, I've never done that well and have been spawn killed until I either quit or the game ends with my being something like 5-20.

The online play could use a lot of work, a lot of glitching has made it almost unbearable to play for me. Some of the maps give you tanks, while this was great when it was new and exciting the novelty wore off pretty quick. I did think that adding dogs instead of a chopper was quite fun... I don't find it too much fun to get killed by a tank 8 times before a rocket finally takes it out, though.

Zombies!!
The Zombie play is exciting and kind of freaks you out when you run out of room to hide and blast away. The objective is to last as long as you can, it starts out with 2-5 zombies, and by level eight you're getting hordes of zombies who will run at you. You have to continually rebuild barriers to give yourself time to regroup after an attack, and when you start out with a pistol, you have the option to purchase other guns. I personally always go for the shotgun, later on a high powered automatic rifle or machine gun. Its incredibly hard, but incredibly exciting to play.

You should join the playstation underground as a game tester. I was a member for years, they send you demo versions of games and you fill out survey cards on them and mail them back.. Random questions about game play, cover art, etc.. They don't pay you anything, but you get random demo games for free. I stopped sending in the cards and they stopped sending the demos. lol

You can run around as batman, robin, batgirl, man-bat, joker, harley quinn, pretty much anyone in the game once you unlock them. Its my second game with 1000G, as I just finished it a bit ago. Put me over 10k in gamer score. (not that it matters, but it does cause yeah.)

I've never had any spawn issues with CoD WaW, at least not any more than I do with CoD4... Then again I play the PC version, maybe its different? I gotta agree with you on tanks though, they're so pointless. Someone with the right explosives can take them out faster than infantry but if you don't have anything but nades they're indestructible...

I didn't like the way the campaigns play through in either game. They're entertaining up until you die 5+ (Broadcasting station in MW anyone?) times from enemy waves that just keep on pouring. I hate it when games increase difficulty by relentlessly spawning enemies 50 at a time...

Not at all, thats how you get killed. The game is made to increase difficulty to ridiculous levels if you stop at any given place for a prolonged amount of time. I remember in that particular level at the broadcasting station (I forget what it was called) I died tons of times trying to get some cover when I finally said "You know what? Fuck it!" and just ran through guns blazing and passed it on the first try.

Whenever I stopped any enemies I killed respawned almost instantly and nades got chucked at me with sniper precision, with more being thrown at a time the longer I stayed put.

Im on Vendetta right now in WaW. In MW the only issue I had was the damn airplane. That damn level is the epitome of a flawless victory. You screw up one time, you miss a reload or tag a wall its game over.

Vendetta will take you a while. You gotta hit that f'ing sniper 3 times, and then as you try to get up the stairs you're getting picked off from the damn windows. I dunno how many times I had to crawl under that f'ing bookcase. lol

Don't forget to pick off General Amsel with a pistol!

All I have to do is pick off 45 Zeros in Black Cats, and complete/win a 4 player comp. co-op on XBL. Then I'll be done with all 1000 GS points for the regular game.